Chapter III #3
He lets his head fall back, and she follows his gaze up, past the buildings to the night sky, amazed that there are stars.
Alice knows that there are always stars, but before, they would have been too faint, her eyes too weak to make them out, and now, she can see them, scattered like diamonds in the sky, and for the first time, she makes a new column in her mind, of things that maybe aren’t so bad.
The lack of fear—that one goes at the top, but right beneath it, she puts this.
But then she starts to wonder how many stars she’d see if she were back in Hoxburn, and then she remembers that if she were back in Hoxburn, she’d never have crossed paths with Lottie, she’d still have a future, a life, a pulse, and that’s enough to tear the mental paper from her mind as Ezra clears his throat again.
“Here is something you should know. We think ourselves immortal, but we’re not.
All things get hollowed out by time,” he says.
“Including us. For some it will take centuries, for others only a mortal life, but one way or another, eventually, pieces of us die. The parts that made us human. Till all that’s left is hunger, and rot. ”
Alice swallows. “What happens then?” she asks.
Ezra’s head drops, his eyes pale but bright. “One way or another, we meet our end.”
“Sounds pretty grim,” she says, wondering if that’s what he thinks happened to Lottie, if that’s why he’s coming with her now.
To save his old friend—or bury her.
She scuffs her boot. “You don’t seem rotten, Ezra.”
He flashes her a crooked grin. “Don’t be fooled. I’m just going slower than the rest.”
There is so much more she wants to ask, but at that moment, his steps slow to a stop, the Commons to one side and a row of buildings to the other, and Alice looks up to find the entrance of the Taj Hotel.
Suddenly, her limbs go heavy. She feels rooted to the pavement, torn between the urge to go in and the urge to turn and run—until she remembers that she can’t go back, not far enough, not to her old life, because it isn’t there anymore, because Lottie took it from her, and that is enough to break loose.
Ezra holds the door and Alice forces herself over the threshold, through the entrance, and into the hotel.
Inside, a marble floor stretches through the lobby, and the perfume of fresh flowers fills the air, so strong it’s almost cloying. To the right, there’s a candlelit bar, but to the left, the stairs—the same bright blue ones she saw in her vision.
Alice starts toward them, only to be interrupted by the appearance of a concierge in a trim black suit.
“Can I help you?” he asks, hands spread slightly in a way that could be a welcome or a wall, and before Alice can think of what to say, Ezra is there, fingers resting gently on the concierge’s sleeve.
“We’re visiting a friend,” he says, his voice steady, and there’s moment of tension, when the concierge looks like he might pull away, but then his eyes flick up to Ezra’s and he sees something there that makes the rigidness go out of him.
“Shall I call up for you?”
“No need,” says Ezra cheerfully. “We know the way.”
He drops his hand, but the effect seems to linger, because the concierge stands there, like a puppet waiting for someone to tug on his strings.
“Anything else, sir?”
Ezra smiles. “No, thank you,” he says, “but you have a wonderful night,” and the way those words wash over him, they might as well be an order, a spell, because the man smiles in genuine pleasure and assures Ezra that he will.
The concierge drifts away across the lobby.
“How did you do that?”
“Conviction,” he says, as if it’s that simple. As if Alice hasn’t struggled with that all her life, as if she didn’t have to hide in a bathroom and dare herself just to be a little bolder for one night, as if that need for false bravado didn’t lead her here. To this.
“You know,” he muses, watching the concierge drift out of the lobby and into the bar, and order a drink. “One thing you learn when you live as long as we do, is that nothing’s permanent. Who you were isn’t who you have to be.”
With that, Ezra nods toward the stairs. “After you.”
He trails behind her now, instead of leading.
But she is glad he’s there. A shadow at her back. A steady hand.
Alice puts her foot on the first step. She runs her fingers along the rich blue paper on the wall, feels her boots sink into the soft blue runner on the stairs.
There was a moment, when her plane hung suspended over the vast Atlantic Ocean, nothing but blue below and blue above, when she looked out at the in-between, stomach in knots, and told herself that her heart was pounding with excitement instead of fear.
This is your life, she thought as the plane sailed on.
This is how it starts.
There are eighteen stairs between the hotel lobby and the landing.
Alice counts them as she climbs—eighteen moments of before and after, then and now, eighteen chances to go forward, or move back.
Only there is nothing behind her anymore, nothing ahead, the whole road has been erased, and she wants to know why.
She needs to know why.
Alice passes a mirror on the stairs, an ornate thing in a gilded frame, and as she locks eyes with the girl in the glass, she is back in the bathroom at the Co-op party, makeup smudged and body coiled stiff with nerves, trying to make a deal with herself, a bet, a game.
Old Alice for New Alice. Just for one night.
She touches the surface of the glass, her fingers no longer warm enough to leave a mark, then drops her hand, and forces herself up, and up, and up, until she’s standing in the hall. Until she’s right there at the door.
The numbers stamped into their small gold seal, just as she saw them in the vision.
139.
Alice looks down at the placard looped around the doorknob— Do Not Disturb —and she doesn’t even have to press her ear to the wood to hear the sounds beyond, bubbles of soft laughter, mouths on skin, whispers of pleasure and—
She grits her teeth and raps her fist against the wood, waiting for the poetic moment when the door will swing open, and the girl who came into her life (and left with it, like a prize), will have to look her in the eyes, to see what it’s like when your past comes back to haunt you.
But the moment doesn’t come.
The sounds of pleasure don’t stop, even though there’s no way they didn’t hear the knocking.
Alice stares in disbelief at the door, and Ezra waits for her to try again, but she’s apparently used up all her nerve, because her hands are now hanging limply at her sides, all the strength gone out of them.
Ezra doesn’t knock, just clears his throat and leans a little toward the door and says, “Lottie, it’s me. We have a problem.”
And even though he didn’t raise his voice, the movement in the room shudders to a stop.
Alice can hear a murmured Stay there, and then the weight of a body rising off a bed, bare feet across the floor, and this is it, the lock turns with a soft click, and the hotel door swings open, and there she is.
Lottie.
The same girl who perched at the edge of the bed in the dark, who danced with Alice surrounded by colored lamps and saved her from the stampede of bicycles and ran with her through the rain, and made her come apart.
Lottie, standing in the doorway, her blouse unbuttoned and her heels cast off, curls wild and cheeks flushed as if her heart’s still beating in her chest.
“Ezra?” she says. “How did you—”
And then she finally sees Alice.
She sees Alice, and those eyes of hers, those candle-bright brown eyes go wide, and at least she has the decency to look surprised.
That part goes to plan. But not what happens next, not Lottie stepping into the hall and catching Alice’s arm, her whole face twisting with concern as she says, “Alice?”
Her name on Lottie’s lips, her voice, so sad and sweet, so full of caring that it makes her reel.
“What happened?” she asks, as if she can’t feel the lack of heat, the absence of a pulse, the silence pooling inside Alice where there should be sound, and the worst part is that even now, even now, Alice feels the pull, like gravity, the urge to lean into Lottie’s touch instead of wrenching back, away, so she does, lets it carry her forward, until her hands connect with Lottie’s front. She shoves her back as hard as she can.
“What happened ?” snaps Alice as they both stumble back into the room. “You should know.”
“Char?” comes a dreamy voice, and another woman appears, the one with the warm skin and the autumn nails, wearing nothing but the bedsheets.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “Who are these people?” and Alice can’t drag her gaze from the thin ribbon of blood running down the side of her neck, the wound itself already healing, but she can taste the pulse from here, like a penny on her tongue.
Lottie—Charlotte—Char, whatever she’s calling herself, goes to the woman and cups her face and says, in that too-steady voice Alice is starting to recognize, “Go into the bathroom. Take a long shower. I’ll join you when I can.”
The woman manages a sleepy nod, and goes, closing the door behind her, and Alice feels like a tightening spring. “Is that what you did to me?” she snaps.
Lottie turns toward her.
“No,” she says. “I wouldn’t.” And she has the nerve to look wounded by the accusation.
Alice watches as she sinks onto the edge of the bed, fingers actually trembling as her hands go to her mouth, and she looks like she might cry, and Alice bristles because this isn’t right, it isn’t fair.
Where is the wicked grin, the monstrous smile, the villain’s monologue?
Lottie doesn’t deserve to look so hurt when she’s the one who did this.
She’s the monster here.
“I didn’t compel you, Alice,” she insists. “I didn’t have to.”
“Bullshit.”
“You wanted me there,” she says softly, almost to herself. “It was just a bit of fun.”
“ Fun? ” snarls Alice. “Was that before or after you killed me?”
Lottie flinches. “I didn’t, ” she says, and Alice grabs her by the shoulders, forces her to look her in the eyes.
“Then how do you explain the fact I’m dead ?”
Dead. The word gets stuck halfway up her throat. She has to tear it out like roots, leaving the taste of rot behind.
But Lottie only shakes her head. “It wasn’t me.”
She says that last part to Ezra as much as Alice—Ezra, who’s leaning, arms crossed, at the spot where the hall becomes the room, as if his opinion somehow matters more, as if he’s the one whose life is over.
“It wasn’t me,” she says again, tears now sliding crimson down her cheeks. “It’s not my fault.”
“Then whose is it?” demands Alice, and Lottie whispers something, a single word, too soft for even her to hear.
“What did you say?”
Lottie clears her throat and says the word again.
“Sabine.”